Axis History Forum

This is an apolitical forum for discussions on the Axis nations and related topics hosted by Marcus Wendel's Axis History Factbook in cooperation with Christian Ankerstjerne’s Panzerworld and Christoph Awender's WW2 day by day.
Founded in 1999.

Best article on this subject we have seen to date..it looks like it was elements of SS GvB and perhaps some Heer support (the heavy guns) acting in consort under the direction of Scheutler. I am not sure about other war crimes perpetrated by GvB except for the shooting of 20+US airborne troopers a week after D-DAY after a brutal firefight..replacement units of the division have been cited for executing German civilians for desertion in the last months of the war, and they were the recipients of some alleged mass shootings by US forces during that same period..evidently during the German winter offensive in Alsace (NORWIND), there were allegations on both sides of shooting of POWS by this unit and the Americans.

President Nicolas Sarkozy has said France committed a "moral error" by ignoring a German World War II massacre of French villagers for decades.Mr Sarkozy became the first French leader to visit the village of Maille and attend remembrance ceremonies on the anniversary of the massacre.Some 124 people - mostly women and children - were killed by retreating Nazi troops on 25 August 1944.It was the second worst wartime mass murder of French civilians.German soldiers, thought to have been acting in revenge for attacks by the French Resistance, gunned down the inhabitants of the small village in western France.Most of the victims were women and children - among them were a three-month-old baby and a wheelchair-bound grandmother.Another massacre the same month at Oradour-sur-Glane became a national symbol for Nazi atrocities and has been widely commemorated.But the killings at Maille, which happened on the same day that Paris was liberated, were largely forgotten.President Sarkozy acknowledged that France had failed the survivors."In the name of the entire nation I have come today to recognise and repair this fault," he said."By ignoring for so long the drama of Maille, by remaining indifferent to the pain of its survivors, by letting the memory of its victims fade, France committed a moral error."Last month a German magistrate visited the village as part of a continuing war crimes investigation into the massacre.Yet 64 years on, little is known about who carried it out and no-one has been brought to justice.